Ashley Carr
September 14, 2007
Aims and Objectives:
One of my goals for this week, along with probably every other week, was to finish these assignments as soon as possible. I stress out every week knowing that I still have something to do. I try to finish by Friday, but most of the time that doesn’t happen. This weekend I have plans on Friday evening, and I have to drive home to work on Saturday evening. Sorry to say, but this weekend I have to miss out on watching the Herd play. Also, we have an Aural Rehabilitation exam on Tuesday; therefore, I have little time to still be working on these assignments. Another goal that I had sought out to accomplish was to join a mailing list and rewrite my research question. Hopefully, the way that I revised my research question will help in making it more researchable. In the beginning, all of this work seemed overwhelming, but it’s Friday and I DID IT! 
Declarative Knowledge:
When looking back at the assignments for this week, there was a lot of new information gained from our workload. Our assignments consisted of learning about Wikipedia, RSS, and different kinds of search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com. We began the week by learning more about what Wikipedia is, and how it works. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is open to anyone with access to the Web for the use of adding or editing information. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. The purpose of RSS is to receive information in a quick and easy way. When looking for information, add the website of interest to the aggregator, and it stores that site’s address and lets you know when new information has been added. When looking at the different search engines, I learned information mainly on Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com. I leared that Google is one of the largest in popularity when it comes to search engines. Also, I learned that when you type information differently into the search box, a different answer can appear. These standards are different for different search engines. I next changed my research question and even performed a search on different words within my topic. I was impressed with the information that I found, and hopefully it will be useful in the future. I also performed a search on my last name and other spellings of my last name. I found this very interesting. Finally, I joined a mailing list for information on Dyslexia. I now know how to join a mailing list; I had just never joined one like this. Hopefully, the information that I receive will be beneficial.
Procedural Knowledge:
This week I learned how to set up an RSS account by the information contained in the Chapter 5 text. We did not actually set up the account, but the book gave us step-by-step directions on how to for future reference. I feel like having an RSS would save time and also give the user the opportunity to receive quite a bit of information. Along with learning the techniques on RSS, I also subscribed to a mailing list. I performed this task by searching for dyslexia mailing lists on Google, and searching through each of the lists before coming up with the one that I thought would be most beneficial. I joined the World of Dyslexia, and they e-mailed me with my confirmation. I then e-mailed that confirmation to the class list.
Conditional Knowledge:
I feel as if all of the knowledge that I gained this week will be beneficial as a student, pre-professional, and also as a citizen. Being a user of wikipedia would be useful in school, work, or even at home because this is a chance for you to become the editor. It also gives you the opportunity to gain information maybe from a different perspective since anyone can edit or add to Wikipedia. RSS is also beneficial for any type of person. It is a quick and easy way to obtain a lot of information. This would save time with research for a paper in school, and also it would save time when performing research within the business world. Lastly, the information on search engines would be helpful to anyone. People of all ages are always looking up information for different purposes. Having this knowledge on the different search engines would help make the research process easier. I feel this information that I obtained this week will help me succeed as a professional in my future. Without these assignments this week, I, along with many others, would probably have never known this information.
